Book Review: The Void Protocol by F.Paul Wilson

The Void Protocol by F.Paul Wilson

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published January 2019 by Forge

For the record, F.Paul Wilson is one of my favorite living authors. Every time a new book comes out I read as fast as I can. This book is the third in a trilogy but let's face it is more than that. The three books of the Ice Sequence stands alone as a trilogy but if you are interested in Wilson's Secret History universe it connects in small but interesting ways. Wilson has his own Marvel has the MCU and Wilson has the secret history. It spans almost thirty books and short stories starting in his novels Black Wind and The Keep (on my top ten horror novels of all time list) and ends in the novel Night World. That one book is the sixth novel of one series (Adversary Cycle) and fifteenth of another (Repairman Jack). I read the whole secret history as it was in 2012, and it is one of my all-time favorite reading experiences. It is the most insanely interweaving book constructed in fiction that I have ever seen. Equal to or even surpassing King Dark Tower when you talk about a single author interweaving most of their work.

I love the Secret History and consider Harbingers (Book 11 of Repairman Jack) to be one of the best twists I have ever read. So Let me be super clear I always root for and promote Dr. Wilson's work. That being said I only kinda sorta liked this book. The story took a turn that didn't exactly work for me.

This trilogy introduced new characters in Laura Fanning and Rick Hayden. Two characters I liked and was fine seeing again. These characters were excellent in the two previous books. Rick is your stereotypical ex-CIA hero type and Laura a Scientist. Sure they are tropes but Wilson always writes these characters with a little tongue in cheek self-awareness. One of the problems with this book for me is that due to the concept they get a little buried in the background and lost.

The concept of these books is that Rick and Laura keep getting drawn into this scientific themed adventures connected to these "Intrusive Cosmic Entities." So what we are seeing is a different window into the moments leading to the cosmic horror at the end of FPW's other two series. While Jack was uncovering the truth, Rick and Laura were also finding clues. They had no idea the world was months from ending.

In this case, they uncover an experiment where the ICE creature's weird DNA was used basically to create a team of X-men like superheroes. I gotta say I didn't like this concept getting introduced to the greater Secret history. IT was OK for this trilogy as an idea but not for the greater universe. It just didn't fit in my mind.

To make matters worse there were just too many characters. Wilson writes with a restrained no-nonsense lack of fluff but with this man characters, it left little room to develop them all. His books always clock in a perfect 330 pages or close to it. I wanted to love this but I just wasn't feeling this one. I mean I liked it, I read it fast and over all I enjoyed the heck out of it. Enjoyment is one thing but I didn't LOVE it as I do most F.Paul Wilson books.

It was still a 3/5 star book for me but in all the books FPW has written it is rare I don't feel 5/5 every time. It is a testament to the high bar he has set over a long and storied career.